MP: big rally against compulsory fund pension system to be staged in Yerevan on March 22

YEREVAN, March 12. /ARKA/. A big rally against the compulsory fund pension system will be staged in Yerevan on March 22, Hrant Bagratyan, an MP from the Armenian National Congress, the bloc of opposition parties, and former prime minister, said Tuesday in the National Assembly.

«On March 22, a rally will be held in Yerevan against the fund pension reform, and before March 28 every effort will be made to develop the protests into a real Maydan,» he said.

The obligatory fund pension system was introduced in the country in January 2014. The system targets all those citizens born later than Jan 1, 1974. The accumulated funds will enable future retirees to shape the size of their pensions at own discretion. Under the reform plan, people will send to their accumulative pension account 5% of their salaries every month, and another 5%, but no more than AMD 25,000, will be added by the government.

The introduction of the compulsory component of the new pension system triggered backlash in the country. Representatives of political parties and nongovernmental organizations don’t believe that the money will be given back to people, and they urging the authorities not to put this idea into practice.

On January 24, Armenia’s Constitutional Court suspended last month Article 76 of the new pension law, which provides for penalties for failed or delayed pension tax payments, and the third paragraph of Article 86, which obligates employed citizens to choose a pension fund, among other parts of the law. The legal proceedings will be over on March 28. -0---